JET ENGINE maker Rolls-Royce has apologised for repeatedly failing to find a fault that caused one of its engines to explode on a Qantas Airways super-jumbo.

Qantas was forced to ground the A380 aircraft for nearly a month after the major safety scare

Rolls said it regretted the accident three years ago in which an engine on the Airbus A380 jet flying from Singapore to Sydney blew up over Indonesia, forcing it to return to Singapore.

A report on the incident by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau watchdog said Rolls missed multiple opportunities to detect the faulty part which caused the blowout in one of its Trent 900 engines.

The company said safety was a high priority and it has improved its engineering, manufacturing and quality assurance regimes to prevent another such incident.

Rolls’ engineering and technology director Colin Smith said: “This was a serious and rare event which we very much regret. On this occasion we clearly fell short.”

The four-engine A380 had 433 passengers and 26 crew on board when the engine exploded on November 4, 2010, spraying the plane with shrapnel and dropping chunks of debris on Indonesia’s Batam island. No-one on the jet or on the ground was hurt.

Rolls-Royce said it has improved its engineering, maufacturing and qaulity assurance regimes

This was a serious and rare event which we very much regret. On this occasion we clearly fell short.

Rolls’ engineering and technology director Colin Smith

The pilots, who received praise for averting a potential disaster, returned to Singapore and landed with limited controls, stopping just short of the end of the runway with four blown tyres, overheated brakes and fuel leaking to the ground.

The incident was caused by a leak from an engine oil pipe, one of a few wrongly made following a measurement error, Rolls said.

The leak led to a fire in the engine and the break-up of a turbine disc, fragments of which ripped through the wing, puncturing fuel and other systems.

It was the first major safety scare to affect the A380 and forced Qantas to ground the aircraft for nearly a month.